The Benefits of Marriage In Retirement

A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that there is a large gap between the amount that married couples have saved and the amount that single people have saved for retirement. For retired people in their late 60s, married couples had saved about nine times more than the median savings for single people. In this case, married couples saved about $111,600 versus about $12,500 for single people. The study “included 401(k)s and IRAs and all taxable savings and investment accounts, but did not include Social Security, pensions, or housing wealth” as part of a person’s savings. The study included divorced or widowed people as single people. 

One of the primary reasons given for this large divide are the costs of becoming or staying single. Divorce can be expensive and the death of a spouse can be damaging to earning potential of a family if the spouse with the higher salary dies first. Furthermore, people who remain single through most of their lives never obtain the benefits of sharing and dividing their expenses between two people. Single people also have to purchase their own insurance because they lack a spouse with those benefits.

See Matthew Heimer, Why Being Married Pays Off In Retirement, MarketWatch: The Wall Street Journal, Apr. 18, 2013.

Special thanks to David S. Luber (Attorney at law, Florida Probate Attorney Wills and Estates Law Firm) for bringing this article to my attention.